Chapter 11 Liam
Liam
Three months into the marriage, and I’d stopped reminding myself it was supposed to be temporary.
The realization hit me somewhere between my third cup of coffee and the rag I was dragging across the already-clean counter.
I’d been wiping the same spot for two minutes.
Thinking about Riley. About the way she’d laughed at dinner last night—a real laugh, surprised out of her—when Mia did an impression of Honey’s indignant snort.
About the way she’d looked at me afterward, like she wasn’t sure what to do with her own happiness.
I knew the feeling.
The restraining order had gone through three days ago.
Emergency protective order, granted the morning after Todd’s voicemail, based on the recording Riley had saved and the pattern of harassment documented in the custody file.
Five hundred feet from Riley, from Mia, from the ranch. Violation meant arrest.
It should have felt like a victory. Instead, it felt like putting a bandage on a wound that needed stitches. Paper didn’t stop men like Todd. It just gave you something to wave at the cops after he’d already done the damage.
But Riley had slept through the night for the first time since that phone call. And Mia had stopped checking the locks three times before bed. So maybe the paper was worth something after all.
My thirtieth birthday had come and gone.
The crew had surprised me at shift change.
Owen blocked the apparatus bay doors while Cal wheeled out a cake from the station kitchen.
Chocolate, slightly lopsided, with Happy 30th Old Man written in frosting that was already starting to slide.
Thirty candles crammed onto the surface like a fire hazard waiting to happen.
“You’re the one who’s supposed to prevent these things,” Cal had said, gesturing at the small inferno. “Blow it out before we have to file an incident report.”
The whole crew had gathered around, laughing, someone starting an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” that devolved into creative improvisation by the second verse.
I’d stood there, surrounded by the people who’d become family over the years, the smell of smoke and industrial soap and too-strong coffee hanging in the air like always.
And then I’d looked up and found Riley.
She was standing at the edge of the group, watching me. When our eyes met, she smiled. The kind of smile that made my chest do something complicated.
I’d looked at the candles, their light flickering against the concrete walls of the bay. Made a wish I didn’t let myself name. Blew them out in one breath.
The cheering had covered the way my heart was pounding.
Patricia had come to the ranch the next morning with the paperwork. Sat at my grandmother’s kitchen table—my kitchen table now, legally, finally—and walked me through the documents that made it official. Deed transfer. Title registration. The ranch was mine.
I’d expected to feel something monumental. Relief, maybe. Triumph. The satisfaction of a promise kept.
Instead, I’d signed my name on the dotted line and felt…
settled. Like a key turning in a lock that had been waiting for years.
The land had always been mine in the ways that mattered.
In the calluses on my hands, the ache in my back after a long day of fencing, the way I knew every hill and hollow by heart.
The paperwork just made it true on paper, too.
That night, lying awake, I’d thought about my grandmother. About the condition she’d set, the impossible deadline that had seemed like cruelty at the time. Married by thirty. She’d seen too many Murphy men let the land die because they were too stubborn to build families.
But remembering Riley’s smile in the apparatus bay, the way she’d looked at me like maybe I was something worth celebrating, I’d understood something Gran had known all along: the ranch was never the point. The family was the point. The land was just the place where you built it.
I had both now. The land and the family.
The question was whether I’d get to keep the latter.
“You’ve been whistling.”
I looked up. Owen stood in the kitchen doorway, two coffees in hand, that quiet half-smile he got when he’d noticed something he wasn’t going to let go.
“Have I?”
“During drills. While restocking.” He crossed to the table and dropped into the chair across from me. “Pretty sure I heard you humming in the shower this morning.”
I thought about it. He was probably right. “Huh.”
Owen slid one of the coffees across the table. “Cal noticed too. Said he hasn’t seen you this relaxed since before Claire.”
I took the coffee. Wrapped my hands around it. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
Owen’s expression shifted. He was still warm, but more serious now. “How’s the arrangement going?”
I took a long sip instead of answering. The coffee was terrible. Firehouse coffee always was. I drank it anyway, trying to find words for something I hadn’t said out loud yet.
Owen waited. He was good at that.
“It doesn’t feel like an arrangement anymore,” I finally admitted. “Hasn’t for a while. I don’t know when that happened. Maybe it never did. But I wake up and she’s there, and Mia’s there, and it feels like…” I trailed off, not sure how to finish.
“Like home?”
“Yeah.” The word scraped on the way out. “Like home.”
Owen nodded slowly, like he’d been waiting for me to catch up to something obvious. He didn’t look surprised.
“And does she know?”
“Know what?”
“That you’re in love with her.”
The words hit hard. Not because they were wrong, but because saying them out loud took away my last place to hide.
“I’m not…” I started, then stopped. Dragged a hand through my hair, the habit kicking in when I didn’t know where to put the feeling. “It’s complicated.”
“It always is.”
“She’s already carrying too much.” My jaw tightened. “The custody case. Todd. Mia waking up screaming in the middle of the night. She doesn’t need me adding… this.”
“Adding this,” Owen echoed, unimpressed. “That’s what you think you’d be doing.”
“What would you call it?”
“Being honest.” He shrugged. “Letting her know how you feel. Seeing if maybe she feels the same.”
“And if she doesn’t?” The question came out quieter than I meant it to.
“Then at least you stop guessing.”
I stared down into my coffee, the surface reflecting the fluorescent lights overhead, warped and flickering. “She was clear from the start. Separate rooms. No romance. This stays business.”
“That was three months ago.” Owen’s voice softened. “People change.”
“What if she hasn’t?” I swallowed. “What if this is just me catching feelings where I’m not supposed to?”
Owen went quiet. Then he leaned forward, forearms on the table, the way he did when he was about to say something that mattered.
“You remember what you told me after the Garrison Street fire?” he asked.
I did. God, I did.
A family of four. Smoke everywhere. One bedroom too far. We’d pulled three of them out, and Owen had carried the weight of the fourth like it was carved into him. Months of second-guessing. Of what-ifs. Of replaying every decision like there had been a right one we’d missed.
I’d sat across from him in this same station, coffee going cold between us, and told him the thing I’d learned the hard way.
You don’t get to know the outcome before you act. You just do the best you can with what you have—and live with the honesty of it.
Remembering that now felt like being caught in my own words.
And realizing I might be about to ignore them scared me more than the answer ever could.
“You said doubt is part of the job.” Owen didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t have to. “You said the only way through it is forward. Sitting still just lets it rot.”
I shifted in my chair. The metal legs scraped softly against the floor.
“That was about a fire.”
Owen’s head tipped, just slightly. “Was it?”
The answer stayed lodged somewhere behind my ribs.
He stood, crushed his empty cup in one hand, and dropped it into the trash. “So tell her.” A pause at my shoulder. “What’s the worst that happens? She doesn’t feel the same. You finish out the year. You both move on.” He glanced back. “At least you stop wondering.”
“And the best?”
His hand rested on the doorframe. He didn’t answer right away.
“The best,” he said finally, “is she’s lying awake in her room having the exact same argument with herself. And you’re both too stubborn to be the first one to say it.”
I exhaled through my nose. He wasn’t wrong. I hated that part most.
“What about you?” The question slipped out before he could leave. “When’s the last time you went on a date?”
Owen smiled. A real one, not the guarded half-smile he gave most people. “I’m seeing Sarah. You know that.”
Right. Sarah. They’d been together for almost three years now, and Owen was happy. Genuinely happy. It looked good on him.
“Right,” I said. “How’s that going?”
“Really good, actually.” He leaned against the doorframe. “She’s been leaving stuff at my place. Toothbrush, extra clothes. Didn’t even ask, just started doing it.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“More than okay.”
His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen and straightened. “I gotta go. Grace needs help with something at the B&B. Her hot water heater’s been acting up again.”
Grace Lin. She ran the Mountain View B&B on the edge of town, a place her grandmother had built decades ago.
She and Owen had been friends since high school, the kind of friendship that survived time and distance and everything in between.
Saturday morning breakfasts, inside jokes, the easy shorthand of people who’d known each other half their lives.
“Tell her I said hi,” I said.
“Will do.” He paused at the door. “Think about what I said. About telling Riley. Before you run out of time to say it.”
He was gone before I could say anything else.